Description: The Daisy Dalrymple series continues. When one of four potential claimants to the title of Lord Dalrymple dies a sudden, nasty death, the question on everyone’s mind is, “was it murder”?

In the late 1920s in England, The Honourable Daisy Dalrymple Fletcher is recruited to help her cousin Edgar — i.e. the Lord Dalrymple. About to turn fifty, Lord Dalrymple decides it is time to find out who would be the heir to the viscountcy. With the help of the family lawyer, who advertises Empire-wide, they have come up with four potential claimants. For his fiftieth birthday, Edgar invites those would-be heirs — along with Daisy and the rest of the family — to Fairacres, the family estate.

In the meantime, Daisy is asked to be the family’s representative at the lawyer’s interviews with the claimants. Those four are a hotelier from Scarborough, a diamond merchant from South Africa, a young mixed-raced boy from Trinidad, and a sailor from Jamaica. However, according to his very pregnant wife, the sailor has gone missing.

Daisy and Alec must uncover a conspiracy if they are going to stop the killing.Review: The latest installment in the Daisy Dalrymple series, this cozy murder mystery was a delight to read. As always, Daisy and her husband Alec Fletcher, the DCI from Scotland Yard, are in the thick of it, but this time, the action takes place too close to Daisy’s heart – in her ancestral home Fairacres. After her father and brother’s death, the estate now belongs to a distant cousin Edward, but unfortunately, he and his wife are childless.

As Edward’s 50th birthday approaches, his lawyer starts looking for an ‘heir of the body’ to ensure primogeniture. Four contenders show up, each with his own story and the supporting set of documents, and all are invited to Edward’s birthday celebration.

Daisy is there too, of course, and the deadly game commences, starting with trifling accidents and escalating to murder. Someone is set on eliminating all the heirs, or maybe all but one? Daisy and Alec investigate.

Daisy is her own charming self, compassionate and acute. She notices the details others might overlook, but her kindness moves her sometimes in unexpected directions. It’s hard to write about her after 20 previous novels. I don’t have any new insights to offer, but I was glad to read her new story. Like an old friend, Daisy comes into my life only occasionally, but with every new book, she becomes more and more familiar, and she never fails to make me just a little bit happier for meeting her.

The book is fast, light, and original. Daisy’s interactions with her disgruntled mother, the Dowager Lady Dalrymple, provide some humorous dialog snatches, while the bountiful red herrings kept me guessing the identity of the culprit to the very end.

I’m accustomed to finding unfamiliar words in Dunn’s novels. This one was no exception. Celerity – swiftness in acting or movingSnook – the gesture of thumbing one’s nose in defiance or derision. Cock a snook at – used to indicate contempt by this gesture